The Homeric Hymns A New Prose translation and Essays, Literary and Mythological

Page: 5

According to a highly ingenious, but scarcely persuasive theory of
Mr. Verrall’s, this interest is unfriendly. {13}
Our second part is no hymn at all, but a sequel tacked on for political
purposes only: and valuable for these purposes because so tacked on.

From line 207 to the end we have this sequel, the story of Apollo’s
dealings as Delphinian, and as Pythian; all this following on detached
fragments of enigmatic character, and containing also (305-355) the
intercalated myth about the birth of Typhaon from Hera’s anger.
In the politically inspired sequel there is, according to Mr. Verrall,
no living zeal for the honour of Pytho (Delphi). The threat of
the God to his Cretan ministers, p. 14—“Beware
of arrogance, or . . . ”—must be a prophecy after the event.
Now such an event occurred, early in the sixth century, when the Crisæans
were supplanted by the people of the town that had grown up round the
Oracle at Delphi. In them, and in the Oracle under their management,
the poet shows no interest (Mr. Verrall thinks), none in the many mystic
peculiarities of the shrine. It is quite in contradiction with
Delphian tradition to represent, as the Hymn does, Trophonius and Agamedes
as the original builders.

Many other points are noted—such as the derivation of “Pytho”
from a word meaning rot,—to show that the hymnist was rather
disparaging than celebrating the Delphian sanctuary. Taking the
Hymn as a whole, more is done for Delos in three lines, says Mr. Verrall,
than for Pytho or Delphi in three hundred. As a whole, the spirit
of the piece is much more Delian (Ionian) than Delphic. So Mr.
Verrall regards the Cento as “a religious pasquinade against
the sanctuary on p. 15Parnassus,”
a pasquinade emanating from Athens, under the Pisistratidæ, who,
being Ionian leaders, had a grudge against “the Dorian Delphi,”
“a comparatively modern, unlucky, and from the first unsatisfactory”
institution. Athenians are interested in the “far-seen”
altar of the seaman’s Dolphin God on the shore, rather than in
his inland Pythian habitation.

All this, with much more, is decidedly ingenious. If accepted
it might lead the way to a general attack on the epics, as tendenz
pieces, works with a political purpose, or doctored for a political
purpose. But how are we to understand the uses of the pasquinade
Hymn? Was it published, so to speak, to amuse and aid the Pisistratidæ?
Does such remote antiquity show us any examples of such handling of
sacred things in poetry? Might we not argue that Apollo’s
threat to the Crisæans was meant by the poet as a friendly warning,
and is prior to the fall of Crisa? One is reminded of the futile
ingenuity with which German critics, following p. 16their
favourite method, have analysed the fatal Casket Letters of Mary Stuart
into letters to her husband, Darnley; or to Murray; or by Darnley to
Mary, with scraps of her diary, and false interpolations. The
enemies of the Queen, coming into possession of her papers after the
affair of Carberry Hill, falsified the Casket Letters into their present
appearance of unity. Of course historical facts make this ingenuity
unavailing. We regret the circumstance in the interest of the
Queen’s reputation, but welcome these illustrative examples of
what can be done in Germany. {16a}

Fortunately all Teutons are not so ingenious. Baumeister has
fallen on those who, in place of two hymns, Delian and Pythian, to Apollo,
offer us half-a-dozen fragments. By presenting an array of discordant
conjectures as to the number and nature of these scraps, he demonstrates
the purely wilful and arbitrary nature of the critical method employed.
{16b} Thus
one learned person believes p. 17in
(1) two perfect little poems; (2) two larger hymns; (3) three lacerated
fragments of hymns, one lacking its beginning, the other wofully deprived
of its end. Another savant detects no less than eight fragments,
with interpolations; though perhaps no biblical critic